An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head. ~Emil Zatopek

Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up. ~Bob Lemon

Baseball is too much of a sport to be a business and too much of a business to be a sport. ~Phillip Wrigley

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. ~Rogers Hornsby

A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz. ~Humphrey Bogart

You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970

You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too. ~Roy Campanella

Wives of ballplayers, when they teach their children their prayers, should instruct them how to say: "God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, God bless Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth has upped Daddy's paycheck by fifteen to forty percent." ~Waite Hoyt

The strongest thing that baseball has going for it today are its yesterdays. ~Lawrence Ritter

The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love. ~Bryant Gumbel, 1981

I don't love baseball. I don't love most of today's players. I don't love the owners. I do love, however, the baseball that is in the heads of baseball fans. I love the dreams of glory of 10-year-olds, the reminiscences of 70-year-olds. The greatest baseball arena is in our heads, what we bring to the games, to the telecasts, to reading newspaper reports. ~Stan Isaacs, "Diamond-Studded Memories," Newsday, 9 April 1990

To think of playing cricket for hard cash! Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun. ~Mary Russell Mitford, 1823

It is all very well to say that a man should play for the pure love of the game. Perhaps he ought, but to the working man it is impossible. ~J.J. Bentley

I know we're meant to be these hard-headed, money-obsessed professionals but we're still little boys at heart. Just ask our wives. ~Rob Lee, 1998

The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front. The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back. ~Steve Garvey

When we played, World Series checks meant something. Now all they do is screw up your taxes. ~Don Drysdale, 1978

With the money I'm making, I should be playing two positions. ~Pete Rose, 1977

Fans are the only ones who really care. There are no free-agent fans. ~Dick Young

It's like going into a nuclear war with bows and arrows. ~Joe Kinnear, comparing finances and resources in high-dollar and low-dollar sports teams

I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us. ~Walt Whitman

Back then, my idol was Bugs Bunny, because I saw a cartoon of him playing ball - you know, the one where he plays every position himself with nobody else on the field but him? Now that I think of it, Bugs is still my idol. You have to love a ballplayer like that. ~Nomar Garciaparra

A ball player's got to be kept hungry to become a big-leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues. ~Joe DiMaggio, quoted in New York Times, 30 April 1961

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America. ~Bruce Catton